Airports Authority Addresses Reports That German Army Lost Six Million Masks at JKIA

Reports that a shipment of six million face masks belonging to the German army has vanished in Kenya are fake, the Kenya Airports Authority (KAA) has said.

International news agency AFP on Tuesday reported that the FFP2 masks ordered by German customs authorities to protect health workers from the coronavirus went missing at the Jomo Kenyatta International Airport, Nairobi at the end of last week.

“The authorities are trying to find out what happened,” a German defence ministry spokeswoman said, confirming a report first published by Spiegel Online.

The shipment was due in Germany on March 20 but it never arrived, news weekly Der Spiegel reported.

According to the New York Times, Kenya’s health ministry declined to comment and a Kenyan Airports Authority (KAA) spokeswoman said the company was still assessing the situation.

On Tuesday evening, however, KAA issued a statement denying the existence of the said shipment.

“Following media reports that a German army shipment of 6 million masks meant for protection against COVID-19 virus vanished at JKIA last week, KAA has conducted an investigation into the matter.

“Our investigation has concluded that there was no cargo of this nature that has passed through JKIA for the last two weeks and no missing cargo has been reported to the authorities,” said KAA in a statement via Twitter.

“We, therefore, wish to inform the public that we are treating this report of alleged disappearance of six million type FFP2 protective masks as fake news & that our cargo section continues with normal operations,” the Authority concluded.